


I’m not Searching for a Miracle (not anymore)

by ChaoticBabe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gray Morals, tom riddle knows what’s up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 06:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20238136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticBabe/pseuds/ChaoticBabe
Summary: Bitterness and morals don’t mix well.





	I’m not Searching for a Miracle (not anymore)

She had a dream once, that the world was on fire.

After, she woke up in a cold sweat, shaking in her bed. Tangled up in sheets that feel to heavy, fighting her way free, only to stumble to the floor.

The cool press of stone jarring, grounding her to the present. She’d pressed her whole body down into it, and stayed there till she couldn’t hear her heart in her ears.

That day the dream follows her, whispering in her ear, caressing up against her back. No one notices.

No one but Tom that is.

Meeting her eyes across the room in the great hall, head tilting slightly to the side as he stares into her. He doesn’t even need legitimacy to see into her soul.

A slow grin takes up on his face, the first real one she’s ever seen on him. It’s beautiful and terrible in equal turn.

Before this they’ve never spoken more than casual pleasantries to one another.

But in that moment he knows her. And she knows him.

Dinner is easily forgotten. 

Excuses are made, and accepted without a second thought by friends who rarely look too closely unless they need something.

He meets her at the entrance, encircling long fingers around a slim wrist. Together they walk towards the library.

They walk all the way to the back, to table barely used. Dozen of silencing and privacy wards thrown up around them without ever speak a word.

Sitting side by side, her wrist still held in his grasp, he turns his full attention towards her.

”Tell me everything.”

For a second she thinks about refusing, if only on the principle that he dare demand. But, she wants to share it with him. Because he understands.

So Hermione tells him everything.

She had a dream once, that the world was on fire, and she let it burn.

Hermione has tried. She has always tried.

She brushes off the slurs, rises above it and proves she is just as good as anyone else.

But it doesn’t matter. It never does. And after years of it, is it any surprise that something hard and bitter grew in her chest. It’s hidden well behind smiles, books, bushy hair.

People rarely notice the mean streak, how over time she become slightly more vicious. No one besides Tom who watched from the wings, waiting.

Tom watched as she tried to be the good like rule abiding bookworm they told her to be. Tom watched as she chaffed under the role, how she wore it like a sweater that never quite fit right.

He watched and waited. There was so much potential there.

And Tom was more than happy to help her explore it once she grew tired of making herself smaller for other people, who didn’t even have the decency to appreciate the effort.

They never spoke, but sometimes he would leave a particularly fascinating book on table at the library, on his way out.

Knowledge has always been sacred to her. 

Yet the older she gets the more confining the rules for it are. Too many things are forbidden. Morals are placed on them that firmly label them as wrong, and are kept out of her reach.

Light and Dark.

They act as if one can’t be just as dangerous as the other. It’s all about the way it’s used.

Only one is taught, while the other is hidden away.

It taste a lot like ignorance.

Tom simply smirks at the wrinkle in her brow, before slipping her a book that you won’t ever find in the library at Hogwarts.

So while they have never talked, they know one another. They know each other in away beyond simple things like favorite colors, or quidditch teams.

Because while Tom watched and waited, Hermione let him. She’s always been will to discard the rules when they prove themselves ineffective. 

So one day Hermione stops trying to be good. Those guidelines are foolish and written by old men who speak in riddles and half truths.

No one notices, too used to what she had been to see what now is. 

Tom just tips his head in recognition.

It feels strangely like acceptance, a kind she’s never known before. There are no conditions tided to this one. Not yet.

For a time things stay like this, no one noticing, and Hermione quietly changing. Tom as ever, watching.

Then she has a dream.

She has a dream, and Tom knows the time for watching is over.

Tom’s hand slips from her wrist, slowly entangling long fingers to entwine between her own.

She had a dream once, that the world was on fire, and she was holding the matches.

Hermione grips Tom’s hand, then throws her head back and begins to laugh. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed.


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